Ghosts
by RachelJMLivingston
Summary: AU One Shot. "It was as if Emily could hear that sound everywhere she went. No matter the time of day, who she was with, or what she was doing. It invaded her dreams as well." Patrick's daughter, Emily, copes with her mother and sister's death, years after the fact.


Ghosts

 **One-shot of OC Emily Jane, and how her father, Patrick, helps her through the pain of remembering her mother and sister's deaths.**

 **Trigger Warnings: hearing a murder, claustrophobic images, a sound triggering bad memories.**

* * *

It was as if Emily could hear that sound everywhere she went. No matter the time of day, who she was with, or what she was doing. It invaded her dreams as well.

Other noises that weren't normally like that, they liked to trick her, and make her think she was hearing it when she wasn't.

It really could be anywhere. The sound of the bus driver hitting the breaks. The sound of the gears on a lift. The sound of the barista steaming milk on the cart outside. Grace's drawer sliding open across from Emily's desk. Rigsby's chair wheel across the office floor. The door to Lisbon's office. Even Cho sliding his pen across the desk to her right.

And that was just during the day. In her dreams it was worse because she heard the actual sound; the screech of metal hitting metal, against the moment, that first moment when it was really happening.

In contrast, it was an odd sound to stick with her. That was the only thing that had remained after everything else had faded away. It could have been anything else. The sound of footsteps past the bathroom going down the hallway, when she knew on instinct it wasn't her dad home from work. It could have been seeing the dark hooded figure slipping into her parent's room through the crack in the door, where she knew her mother and sister were. It could have been the horrible squelching sound that she now knew was her sister being stabbed, killing her instantly.

It should have been the strange keening cry her mother gave upon waking up, covered in her youngest daughter's blood, seeing Charlotte dead beside her, and seeing the man move towards her, knife in hand. It ought to have been the even worse sounds that followed when the man violated her mother in every way possible, then the sound of her mother dying too. It might have been the crushing almost-silence that followed, when she now knew he was posing the bodies, taping the note to the door for her dad to find, and painting his signature mark on the wall after staining her mother's toenails with her own blood. But it wasn't, that silence had been strangely welcoming.

It had let her unfreeze from where her hand had been touching the door handle when she'd first heard the footsteps. Let her think properly and decide to crawl and cram her way underneath the barely-any-space under the free-standing claw foot bath tub. It had allowed her to even out her breathing somehow, and stay silent until he'd left the house. It let her realise her only saviours had been that she was supposed to be away at summer camp, that they hadn't mentioned it to anybody that she'd chosen to stay home, and that she had a tendency to go to the toilet in the dark, without turning the light on. That she'd flushed the toilet in the few moments before he'd entered the house, and that the water system had already fallen silent, and that their home was brand new, so housed no ancient pipes to clatter even after turning off the taps from washing her hands.

All of that had left that one sound with her. The sound of his knife catching against the bedside lamp as her mother had tried in vain to fight him off. The harsh metal-on-metal. The screech of the two scraping against each other. That was the sound that chose to ring in her ears. It hid the guttural screams of her father upon finding his wife and youngest child slain horribly in their beds. Stopping her from hearing his choked sobs that turned to him shrieking her name when he remembered she was home.

It wasn't until he'd fled to her bedroom to try and find her, then barrelled in the bathroom, slamming on the light and spotting the tie on her dressing gown snaking out from underneath the bath, literally it wasn't until she felt his hand close around her wrist, sticky with blood, that she realised he was there. The screeching sound had gradually petered out after he'd pulled her out from underneath the bath tub, covered in dust and trembling from head to toe. It faded to nothing as her father clutched her to his chest, as his tears soaked her hair, and then eventually her own sobs drowned it out completely as he rocked her back and forth, as if she was a little girl once more, not the sixteen year old she was back then.

That was what she was left with. And it was strange. She never told her dad what the noise was. That was her cross to bear. And she knew he had his own triggers that took him back to that night. But they both had a weird way of knowing when one of them had been seeing or hearing ghosts.

She looked up from her computer and immediately locked eyes with her dad. He smiled at first but instantly recognised the haunted look in the depths of her eyes.

He stood, closing his book with a snap, leaving his sofa to vanish into the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with her lilac tea cup and saucer, with her favourite vanilla chai tea brewing inside. He placed it by her right hand then lifted his hands to sit on her shoulders. He squeezed them three times and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head, then returned to his sofa. She felt his gaze on her a few more times until, after a few sips of warming tea, she felt her memories slip back into the past, into the back of mind and she could return his initial smile.

Then they could get back to their day. Patrick to whatever skill he was teaching himself next, and Emily to the paper work that had built up on her. Being a CBI agent had its perks and its downfalls.

She was grateful for the repetitive nature of filing and writing details, it settled her mind and set her back on track. Her ghosts belonged to the past, and that was where they would remain, despite their constant haunting. She wouldn't, couldn't let Red John win.

* * *

 **Reviews are greatly appreciated! Hope you enjoyed it :) xxx**


End file.
